Website Reviews SmartLiving123

December 26, 2010

December 24, 2010

Myhome.BankofAmerica.com – Bank of America Home loans

Filed under: Money & Investing — Tags: , , , , — Paul @ 2:25 am

Find Bank of America home loans information at http://myhome.bankofamerica.com.

This is a web site to visit for people who are considering taking a home loan from Bank of America (BOA). BOA specifically set up this sub-domain for first-time home buyers who need home loans to finance their new homes. If you plan to shop for a new house or for a new mortgage loan, you may want to stop by at this web page.

The information provided at this website will help you figure out whether it is a right financial decision for you to own a house and how much home mortgage loan you can afford based on your current savings and income. There is also a very educational tutorial on the site which can give you an overview of the home buying and loan purchasing process and help you understand how it works. If you are first-time home shopper and have no idea about how the home buying process works, this tutorial is highly recommended. It is a very basic guide, but very easy to understand. For instance, if you are considering whether you should rent or own a house, your decision should depend not only on your financial status, but also on whether you need to move frequently. If you are a frequent mover because of your work or study, it may not be wise to own a house since you may have to spend a lot of time, energy and money in the house buying and selling process. In this case, you may want to consider renting instead of buying.

Many people are proud of themselves because they are home owners. But when shopping for a house, it is not only about finding your dream home but also about buying it at affordable price particularly when financing your new home with a mortgage loan. When setting the budget for your house purchase, you should consider both monthly mortgage expenses and other payments associated with your house such as home insurance, maintenance fees and property tax. When shopping for your mortgage loans, you should understand how to lower your interest rate by improving your credit score and increasing your down payment percentage. These days there are many types of home loans available on the market. So you need to do a thorough research on them so that you can choose the right home loan from a trusted lender. To make sure that there is nothing wrong with your loan contract, you should also be familiar with the loan process and terminology.

To learn more on Bank of America home loans or check the current BOA mortgage rates, please check out http://myhome.bankofamerica.com.

December 23, 2010

www.USBank.com/Credit-Cards – USBank Credit Cards

Filed under: Finance — Tags: , , — Paul @ 2:49 am

To apply for a USBank credit card, go to www.usbank.com/credit-cards.

US Bank is a major retail bank in the United States of America. It is the sixth largest bank by deposit based in the US, and has more than 3000 branches over 24 US states. A big part of its business is the issuing of credit cards for retail customers. At this web-page, you can get an overview of all the cards issued by US Bank.

US Bank credit cards can be divided into 3 categories according to their benefits and purpose including: rewards, basic, and student. The rewards cards issued by USBank are especially popular. The most popular one is the FlexPerks Cash Rewards Visa Card. The most attractive feature of it is the 1% cash back on all purchases without limit. There is also no annual fee. Introductory features include 3% cash back on all gasoline purchases for the first 90 days, and 0% introductory APR for the first 6 months on balance transfers. Finally, it also includes free extended warranty coverage, which doubles the manufacturer’s warranty period up to 1 year, as well as free collision and damage insurance on rental cars, which allows you to decline the collision coverage offered by rental car companies and saves you cash. Note that to use these free additional features, you must charge your purchases or your rental cars to the USBank FlexPerks Cash Rewards Visa Card.

In addition to the FlexPerks Cash Rewards cards, US Bank also has many other rewards cards that offer rewards in various forms. For example, US Bank offers several travel rewards cards, which allow you to accumulate frequent flier miles every time you charge purchases onto them. Currently, airlines participating in USBank travel rewards program include AeroMexico and Korean Air Skypass. USBank also offers retail rewards cards, with rewards that are tied to specific retailers. For example, USBank offers an REI card, tied to Recreational Equipment Inc stores. REI is a consumer cooperative that specializes in selling outdoor and sporting gear. If you shop frequently at REI stores, this one may be worth your while. It has no annual fee, and you get 5% cash back on all REI purchases, as well as a 1% rebate on all other purchases. In addition to the REI card, USBank also has tie-ups with other retailers such as Gymboree and Harley-Davidson.

If you are interested in any of these financial products mentioned above, visit www.usbank.com/credit-cards for more information.

December 20, 2010

www.MyFonts.com/WhatTheFont

Filed under: Arts — Tags: — Paul @ 2:50 am

Have you heard of the What The Font tool, from the My Fonts website? This useful font identification tool is located at www.MyFonts.com/WhatTheFont.

Have you ever seen an attractive logo or heading on a website and wondered what the font is? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some convenient font identification tool or font finder tool that you could use? The My Fonts website provides just such a tool.

It is a website that was set up by BitStream Inc, a type foundry located in Marlborough, Massachusetts. It is one of the oldest font designers in existence today. Bitstream has a large library of classic and new fonts, which it licenses out to companies for inclusion in their software products, such as CorelDraw and Adobe Photoshop. The fonts are also sold to artists and designers for use on websites, pictures and logos. The myFonts.com website was set up by Bitstream to sell fonts mainly to small users for use in artwork and design work. To help users identify and locate the fonts they would like to purchase, the website has provided the WhatTheFont tool.

What can you do with the WhatTheFont tool? With this tool, you can recognize the font used in a piece of text. First, do a screen capture of the website where you found the text. If the text in question is on paper, you can scan the text with a scanner. Save the image as a grayscale TIFF file, although JPEG files will also work. For best results, include at least 30 characters with good mix of letters, preferably with some letters with descending strokes, such as the letters “g” and “j”. Ensure that the image resolution is high enough so that the letters are well-separated and at least 100 pixels tall, and the thin letter strokes are represented by at least several pixels. A resolution of 300 dpi is usually sufficient for scanned images. Also, it is important that the letters are approximately horizontal, so that the type engine can properly recognize the letters.

Once the image file has been properly prepared, go to the www.MyFonts.com/WhatTheFont website and upload the image file. Then, you will be asked to identify the characters contained within the uploaded image. A maximum of 50 characters will be queried and submitted to the type engine. After this, the site will tell you what font the letters are in. If there is no exact match to the letters, the site will tell you what font in its library come closest to the supplied image, and you can see for yourself whether it is an adequate replacement.

To find out what font an attractive website is in, go to www.MyFonts.com/WhatTheFont to use the What The Font tool.

December 18, 2010

www.citibank.com – Citibank Student Loans Information

Filed under: Finance — Tags: , , , — Paul @ 2:21 am

To apply for Citibank student loans, go to http://www.citibank.com.

This site is the official internet presence of Citibank. Citibank is one of the Big Four Banks in the United States. It is the consumer banking arm of Citigroup, the financial institution that was rescued by US taxpayers during the 2008 financial crisis, and is now majority-owned by the US government. The bank receives savings and checking deposits from consumers, and offers a wide variety of loan products, including credit cards, mortgages, personal loans, and student loans.

If you are about to attend college, you should begin to familiarize yourself with the process of financial aid and student loan application. To facilitate this process, Citibank has also set up another website, www.studentloan.com, to help educate students who are looking for a student loan. For example, before applying for a loan, you should first arrive at an estimate of your financial needs during your education. The amount of money you need depends on the school you are going to, as well as the various grants and scholarships that you may have been offered. You should also look at federal loans and grants that may be applicable to your situation. In general, it is usually best to take advantage of and max out any federal loans and grants first, because these are usually offered at a subsidized interest rate, and have relatively loose repayment terms. Only after you have maxed out your federal loans should you turn to private educational loans to fill in any financial gaps that remain.

Once you have finished your preparation work, you should check out what specific student loan products Citibank has to offer. To do this, click on the “Lines and Loans” tab, then on the “Student Loans” option, to see the private educational loans that Citibank offers. There are three classes of student loans offered by Citi. The first class is a loan for general undergraduate and graduate education, payable over 20 years after graduation. The second class is a loan specifically for medical, dental, veterinary, and pharmacology students, payable over 25 years after graduation. And the third class is a student loan for specifically for law students, payable over 20 years after graduation. On the same site, you can also begin the application process by clicking on the “Apply Now” button. The interest rate that you are offered will depend on your field of study, as well as on the credit scores of your loan guarantors, and therefore will be known only near the end of the application process, after you have provided all the pertinent information.

To learn about Citibank student loans, go to www.citibank.com, or www.studentloan.com.

December 17, 2010

www.discovercard.com/shopdiscover – Shop Discover Merchants List

Filed under: Shopping — Tags: , , , , — Paul @ 2:36 pm

See the Shop Discover merchants list at http://www.discovercard.com/shopdiscover, the official web site of ShopDiscover.

Www.discovercard.com/shopdiscover is the hyperlink for the Shop Discover web site. On this web site, visitors can learn the benefits of this rewards program and how the program works and take a look of the Shop Discover merchants list. If you are an existing member of ShopDiscover, you can log into your account to start shopping and earning cashback bonus on this page. If you already have a Discover credit card but you don’t have an online account, you can register your Discover card and get an online account at this site. Once you have a Discover credit card online account, you can log in to check your balance, pay your bill and enjoy the benefits of the ShopDiscover program and earn cashback from your qualified online orders.

Shop Discover rewards program provides cashback bonus for more than 150 top online stores such as buy.com, bestbuy.com, homedepot.com and many others. To see the stores that you are interested in at this cashback shopping site, you may want to check the Shop Discover merchants list (also known as ShopDiscover retailers list) which is provided at discovercard.com/shopdiscover. This list can be checked in two places on this site. First, you can see it in a drop-down list by clicking on the “Select Retailer” in the “log in to start shopping” section on the top right of the page. You can scroll down the alphabetic list to find the store that you are going to shop for. Second, you can go to the “ShopDiscover Retailers” page by using the orange button “See All Retailers”. On the “retailers list” page, four featured stores are listed at the upper part and an alphabetic store list is shown at the lower part. At this time, the featured retailers are Dell (10% cashback holiday bonus), Sears (10%), Walmart (5%) and Groupon (20%). Because it is a holiday season, the current cashback offers are very good. But these attractive cashback percentages may not be available all year long. You can only get them during the holiday promotion period. That is why they call it “Holiday Bonus”.
On the ShopDiscover retailers list, the store names are shown on the left side and the percentage cashback bonuses are shown on the right side. The retailers are also categorized according to the first letter of its name. For instance, if you want to check how much cashback percentage offered for Ralph Lauren.com, you simply click on “R” and on the next screen, you will see all stores with names starting with the r letter.

What can I do if I cannot find the online store I want on this Shop Discover merchants list? If the store name is not included in this list, it means that ShopDiscover doesn’t offer cashback for that store. But this doesn’t mean that other online cashback shopping sites don’t offer either. You can also have the freedom to look into other cashback shopping sites such as fatwallet, Mr. Rebates and so on.

To see what merchants are available at ShopDiscover, please visit http://www.discovercard.com/shopdiscover.

December 16, 2010

www.JCPRewards.com – JCP Rewards Program

Filed under: Shopping — Tags: , , , , — Paul @ 5:13 pm

Join the JCP Rewards program online at http://www.jcprewards.com.

Www.jcprewards.com is the web site for customers of JC Penney Department store to sign up for the JCP Rewards, a shopping rewards program sponsored by JCPenney. This loyalty program is designed to help consumers shop and save at JCPenney department store by earning rewards. It is a free program and everyone can join it without charge. If you are a frequent shopper at JC Penney and you want to reward yourself, this program is perfect for you.

As a JC Penney customer, you may already know that there are many ways to save money while shopping at this store. For instance, you can enjoy savings by using JCPenney coupons. When ordering things online at www.jcp.com or www.jcpenney.com, the JC Penney online store, you may be eligible to earn cash back rewards from your orders at online cash back shopping web sites such as fatwallet, mrrebates, ebates and so on. No matter if you like shopping on-line or in-store, you may can save some money while shopping with a JCPenney Rewards credit card. But you should not confuse the JCPRewards program with the JCPenney Rewards credit card. They are not the same thing. If you are a JCPenney Reward Credit Cardmember, you can log in online at www.jcprewards.com/credit to register your card and create an account with the JCP Rewards program, and then you can start to earn points. If you don’t have a JCPenney credit card but you use other credit or debit cards to pay your shopping bill, you still can register your debit or credit card while creating a free JCP Rewards account at this web site.

What is the major benefit of being a JCP Rewards member? The short answer is “Get rewarded”. Here is how this program works. When you make a purchase using your registered credit or debit card at JC Penney (including in-store, online and on the phone), you will earn 1 point for every dollar you spent. Once you get 250 points, you will receive a $10 JCP Rewards certificate which can be redeemed at JCPenney.

What I said above sounds simple, doesn’t it? Actually like many other rewards programs or loyalty programs, there are also some twists. For instance, people cannot always earn points from their JCPenney orders. To earn points, they have to pay the bill using the card they have registered in their JCPRewards account. If you pay the bill using cash or check, you cannot earn rewards points from that transaction. And also not all orders are eligible for rewards. Certain clearance items are not eligible for earning points, even though sale-priced items are eligible.

Cons of the JCP Rewards program:
There are at least two things that I don’t like this loyalty program. First, the JCPrewards points do not roll over to the next month. What does it mean? This means that if members are not able to accumulate 250 points within a month, they will be rewarded. Second, the JCP rewards certificate expires. Once you get your JCP rewards certificate, you have to use it before the expiration date.

To learn more information about the JCP Rewards program, visit http://www.jcprewards.com. If you have questions about your account, please contact the JCPrewards customer service by calling their phone number at 1-888-527-7937.

December 15, 2010

www.citimortgage.com – Check Current Citi Mortgage Rates Online

Filed under: Finance — Tags: , , , , — Paul @ 9:31 am

To check current mortgage rates offered by citibank online, visit http://www.citimortgage.com.

For a quick look at the approximate rates that are being offered, you should move your mouse over the “See Today’s Rates” button, and the current fixed rates in California will pop up. Both the 30 year and the 15 year fixed rates are shown. The rates are listed under the columns of “Interest Rates”, “Points”, and “APR”. If you are trying to compare Citibank mortgage rates with that of another bank, the correct rate to use for comparison would be the annual percentage yield “APR” rate, which takes into account points and prepaid interest among different lenders. Note however that the APR may or may not include application and appraisal fees, as well as title insurance.

Mortgage rates offered by banks vary depending on many factors, including your state of residence, your credit score, the duration of the loan, and your income level. For a more comprehensive look at Citi mortgage rates that take into account some of these factors, you need to click on the “Get your new home mortgage started today” link, which leads you to a page with the “Customize my rates” button. Clicking on that button takes you to a comprehensive mortgage interest calculator. At first sight, the calculator looks very forbidding, because of the large number of fields on it. However, many of these fields are automatically calculated from the values you enter, so the actual number of fields you have to enter is very small. The most important fields are right on the top of the calculator, marked with red asterisks. These are the location of the property you want to buy, whether it is a primary residence or a vacation home, and the expected purchase price. Based on your entries in these fields, the monthly homeowner’s insurance and taxes will be automatically calculated. The downpayment is also automatically set at 20% of the desired loan amount. Note that if you cannot pay a downpayment of at least 20%, you will be hit with a higher interest rate and be required to purchase additional mortgage insurance. Conversely, if you enter a higher downpayment, you can get a lower interest rate. Finally, you need to enter your monthly income and expenses. Once you have entered these fields, just click on the “Save and Continue” button, and you will be presented with a variety of mortgage options based on your inputs, including both fixed and adjustable interest rate loans of various durations.

To check today’s citi mortgage rates online, go to http://www.citimortgage.com.

December 14, 2010

www.superfreshfood.com/couponsource – Superfresh CouponSource Sign Up | On-line eCoupon

Filed under: Shopping — Tags: , , , , — Paul @ 6:10 am

To browse for grocery coupons on the web, try www.superfreshfood.com/couponsource.

This site is hosted by the grocery chain Superfresh, owned by the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. There are sixty three Super Fresh stores located in the Mid Atlantic region, mainly in the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. While the site is owned by Super Fresh, the service is actually operated by Zavers, a leading provider of eCoupons. Zavers bought Red Tag Online Coupons, and renamed it CouponSource, and began to offer paperless coupons on that site  in collaboration with various participating manufacturers and retailers. Paperless eCoupons benefit manufacturers, retailers and consumers. Manufacturers no longer have to print paper coupons, and count and handle coupons returned from retailers. Retailers save the costs of handling coupons, and consumers no longer have to cut and save coupons. Currently, Zavers has partnered with only a handful of retailers to offer this service, including Superfresh, Pathmark, and Waldbaum’s.

To sign up for this service, first go to www.superfreshfood.com/couponsource and click the “Create An Account” button. Then, enter your name, email and zip code, and then select a password. Zavers will then send you an email with a one-time use link where you can register your store loyalty card with the service. Once that has been done, you have linked your store loyalty card to the Zavers account, and can begin saving paperless e-coupons to your card.

To use the service, go to the site and log in with your email and password. Then, click on the “Coupons” tab and begin browsing the coupons available. There are a wide variety of coupons available, including grocery, beverages, frozen and personal care products. When you find the coupons you want, just click on the “save it” button next to the coupon, and it will be saved to your Zavers account. To view the coupons that you have saved, go to www.zavers.com, and click on the “My Coupons” tab. You will then see all the coupons you have saved, and be given an option to print out a shopping list of all the products which you have coupons for. There is no need to print out the coupons themselves. The next time you are checking out the products at the store, the coupons will automatically be used when you swipe your store loyalty card. Note however, that you can only use one coupon on one item, and if you are also using paper coupons, only the first coupon used (whether e-coupon or paper coupon) will post. Also, many stores do not double e-coupons like they do paper coupons.

To begin saving with paperless coupons, sign up for Superfresh CouponSource, an online eCoupon service at http://www.superfreshfood.com/couponsource.

December 13, 2010

Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress